Dr Yiannakis John OAM
Charles Darwin University
Megistopoules and Migration Revisited
Abstract
Despite the important public and private contributions made by Greek women to their community and Western Australian society generally, until recently very little has been written about them. Their experiences have been largely ignored, while those of male “pioneers”, community patriarchs and men in general have become folklore. Whether Castellorizian or not, Greek women were basically invisible and under-researched. This has changed in the last 20 years with contemporary research becoming more discerning in the study of Greek females in Australia.
Biography
Dr John N. Yiannakis OAM worked as a Research Fellow at Curtin University for many years. Currently, he is employed at Australian Catholic University and is an Adjunct Research Fellow at Charles Darwin University. Dr Yiannakis has published extensively in the field of Greek migration, settlement and adaptation to Western Australia. His work includes Greek Pioneers in Western Australia; Odysseus in the Golden West and Vlase Zanalis: Greek Australian Artist. More recently a co-authored monograph Black Night, White Day: Greek women in Australia, a longitudinal study was published, and he edited and contributed to both volumes of Perspectives on the Hellenic Diaspora.
